1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to storage area networks. More specifically, the present invention provides high availability and system management capabilities for applications in storage area networks.
2. Description of Related Art
In many storage area networks, high availability is provided either by hosts or end devices. For example, a storage device may have multiple disks that include redundancy, striping and mirroring features. A host writes data to a disk array and the disk array is responsible for managing redundancy features in a manner transparent to the host. In another example, hosts may be responsible for implementing various features. Instead of having an end device perform the redundancy operations, a host can elect to mirror and stripe data across a variety of storage devices in a storage area network.
With the emergence of intelligent storage area networks, applications such as volume management, virtualization, and remote replication are being moved to the network. In some examples, fibre channel switches in a storage area network perform functions associated with these applications in a manner transparent to the hosts and end devices. However, mechanisms for making services provided by the applications highly available and easily manageable are limited.
Consequently, it is desirable to provide techniques to improve the management and high availability features of storage area network switch based applications.